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I've noticed that there are a few board-gamers on these forums, but no thread other than a few scatter shot suggestion threads, and the odd thread for specific games. High time we corrected that, I say.

So bring your questions, your play reports, your reviews and especially your general enthusiasm for dice, chits, cards, wooden blocks and paper money.
Looking for someone to play with? Check out the GWJ Online Boardgame Group!

Vargen, you're in a rare spot here. I think you really should look into Risk: Legacy. You have a chance here to start up a little board gaming group if you play your Christmas cards right. Very similar fast play mechanics, sans air bases, but for all intents and purposes liquid awesome in a nicely appointed box.

Start? We play board and card games all the time. We just didn't know what we had with that box labeled Risk. I'm definitely going to check out Risk Legacy now that I know its pedigree a bit better.

LotR Risk has one advantage that Star Wars can't touch: as a kid I was obsessed with the giant fold-out map of Middle Earth in Mom's big red Lord of the Rings book. Getting to play a game on that map just makes me all kinds of happy.

LotR Risk has one advantage that Star Wars can't touch: as a kid I was obsessed with the giant fold-out map of Middle Earth in Mom's big red Lord of the Rings book. Getting to play a game on that map just makes me all kinds of happy.

That was part of the appeal for me, too. LotR Risk is like playing on a MERP map. Something very awesome about that.

A Castle Ravenloft match or as I remember it: A Soon-To-Be Future Series of Seizure-Inducing Horrific Flashbacks.

Man this game is tension all the way. In the first 20 minutes I thought we were gonna get wiped, the both of us. But then we pulled ourselves out of the small frying pan into a larger fire albeit this time with better gear.

The particular objective in this scenario-based game was to find some kobold sorcerer and put an end to him and his shenanigans. One thing I learned in my fourth (fifth?) game of Castle Raveneloft is that encounters suck. I'd rather fight monsters then have some arbitrary event remove hit points or decide now is the time for the vampire lord of the castle to come down and use us as blood dispensers. "Bleh, bleh, wat is dis? I did not know the Canadian Blood Services delivered, bleh bleh."

We kept surviving encounter after encounter and encounters with monsters followed by more encounters and monsters. When it wasn't the air itself(!) sucking our hit points away it was an event condition called Blood Fog increasing the attack damage of monsters. Monsters are also known as Villains.

After a teleport glyph sent me to the other side of the discovered gameboard we managed to get back together with my own teleport scroll. Veterans of this game know that being split up is insanely dangerous. Then we flipped over the tile for our final target: Klak the Kobold Sorcerer. We aced that fight and we were left with destroying his invention that was causing magical chaos across the land. That was more problematic. Klak had a cool fireball knock-back ability but we killed him quick. Saving your super once-a-day powers for the final battle sure helps!

Then I realized the monsters we left behind? Those guys? They weren't so left behind anymore. We had a wraith enter into battle range which proceeded to kick our butts. And then we had a spider and a blazing skeleton coming up from the rear. We debated a little on what to do but in the end we went with simply attacking Klak's invention with everything we had. This scenario's victory condition was to bust up Klak's face and stomp his 'toy'. That meant no attacking the wraith which opened me up, my dwarven cleric, to more damage. I could have attempted to kill the wraith but that meant it would have 'death shrieked' - one damage to each us. That would have killed Lasherthecat's fighter and thus ended the game. We had no healing surges left or other means to get her back on her feet.

I toughed it out while we laid into the invention. I tried to ignore the approaching spider which can cover twice the distance of other monsters. And I also managed to forget about the blazing skeleton which could launch fireballs from some distance away burning all the players in a room.

At last it was down to Lasherthecat swinging at the invention with all she had. Thanks to the Blood Fog encounter conditions, which gave monsters and players the ability to add +1 damage to any attack roll of a natural 17 and higher (The game uses a 20-sided die to decide battles, trap disablings and special instances) the crap-traption received the necessary two damage to be destroyed. Yay! Good game, real tense and I can't wait to try another scenario.

Here is Lashethecat celebrating our win.

Here is Lasher the actual cat making sure we are paying attention - to her that is. :)

And here is the final showdown between two demons of skill (us) and a helpless doo-dad (that flat tile thing sitting on top of the larger tile) Our player figures are dark blue solid things. The semi-transparent figure is a Wraith, i.e., a pain in the ass. The grey figure on its side is Dead Klak. :O And that spider-looking thing that appears to be biting my ass? That's a giant spider that is biting my ass. :(

My girlfriend picked up Wrath of Ashadalon earlier this year and we've played it a few times. Utterly brutal game. Completely agree that the encounters are cripplingly annoying. I forget which file it was on BGG but we've added a couple house rules from there to tune the game more to our liking although we haven't played it in a good while due to getting her addicted to 2 player Race for the Galaxy. I should request to play it again since we haven't played through all the scenarios.

My girlfriend picked up Wrath of Ashadalon earlier this year and we've played it a few times. Utterly brutal game. Completely agree that the encounters are cripplingly annoying. I forget which file it was on BGG but we've added a couple house rules from there to tune the game more to our liking although we haven't played it in a good while due to getting her addicted to 2 player Race for the Galaxy. I should request to play it again since we haven't played through all the scenarios.

The game goes a lot smoother if everyone makes working together their only goal - how abilities play off of each other, never splitting up and planning future actions ahead of a possible event. Victory will come just by doing that. The trick for myself and my wife was focusing on each encounter/battle as if it was it's own complete adventure - beginning, middle, outcome. Then do that for the next encounter/battle.

I remember hearing/reading/watching(?) the game developers say the success rate (more like survival rate) is close to 30%. Yee-yowch. I for one enjoy that kind of difficulty though. :drool:

MonoCheli wrote:

Strangeblades wrote:

A Castle Ravenloft match or as I remember it: A Soon-To-Be Future Series of Seizure-Inducing Horrific Flashbacks.

Looks like you had a better outcome then we did at PAX earlier this year...

I recently picked up The Legend of Drizzt when it was $39.99 on Amazon. It was fun playing the firist mission and I look forward to playing the rest.

Oh yeah. You can get wiped pretty easily. I'm sure you've realized a party has a finite amount of resources. The longer you spend time in Ravenloft or wherever the more healing surges you are going to lose and the more utility and daily powers you are going to spend. It pays to spend less time killing monsters and hoping for a 20 result and more time hunting for the goal while sticking with the note above - stick together, learn how to 'game' the system and play abilities off one another.

ADDED: I see you are fighting Count Strahd. Sigh, the memories of reading those old Ravenloft novels. They all ended badly for the protagonist. Of course the 'hero' was typically an ass-hat.

"This here is the land of the blade and the rifle. It's godless country." - GODLESS

I've managed a few plays of both Castle Ravenloft and Wrath of Ashardalon and I've found the latter to be the better gaming experience so far. Overall the mechanics are fairly similar, but I think three things help the overall experience:

1) Loot! The treasure deck is now mostly cool and useful items that either give permanent bonuses or you hold until you use, unlike the "use immediately" stuff that mostly makes up Ravenloft's treasure deck. Getting "stuff" is always fun.

2) I felt like the encounter deck wasn't quite as cruel, but that may just be my memory. Seemed like there were fewer "damage everyone" and "minimum one damage" effects. I could be wrong, though.

3) Monsters generally have two health instead of one. This means they stick around longer, giving the party more interesting decisions to make each turn. I felt like there were never quite enough baddies on the map in Ravenloft but it felt just about right in Ashardalon. I guess the setting and monsters are more what I want out of a D&D setting, too.

If you like co-op dungeon crawlers and want something a little more crunchy, I've had fun with Gears of War. I'm not crazy about the theme (not a fan of the video game) but the mechanics are pretty solid.

If you like co-op dungeon crawlers and want something a little more crunchy, I've had fun with Gears of War. I'm not crazy about the theme (not a fan of the video game) but the mechanics are pretty solid.

Really? I might have to put it on my list, then.

Nothing too much to contribute to this thread at the moment, but I've found myself unable to commit to full-on D&D games. Board games, however, are a different story. No commitment other than a few hours, and most of the games I go for don't require a lot of time to play. Once I move into my own place, I'm hoping to make Board Game Night a bi-monthly or tri-monthly event.

I know my sister got me a board game from ThinkGeek for Christmas this year. I have suspicions it is the Game of Thrones board game.

Board Games I Own:

- Ninja Burger
- Mall of Horror
- Nintendo Monopoly
- Star Wars Monopoly
- Super Mario Chess
- Munchkin Quest
- (I swear I have another one, but for the life of me I can't remember it at the moment)

Board Games I Want to Own:

- Castle Ravenloft (4th Edition in a format that makes sense to the mechanics!)
- Kaiju/Godzilla Board Game
- Halo Wars: Halo RISK
- Gears of War game mentioned above
- Order of the Stick
- More classic games like RISK or Monopoly with a video game theme

Random question that I think you guys would know more about than anyone else. What are the best board games currently out on iPad? My wife and I have been having a great time being able to pack around Ticket to Ride, Puerto Rico and other games that we play on trips. I was wondering if there was anything else we were missing. We know about Carcassonne and Catan as well. I don't think there is an iPad version of Powergrid (our favorite physical board game) nor Dominion. Any recommendations would be helpful.

And no, I'm not trying to turn this into another video game thread. I have a major passion for board games. I just figured it might be safe to ask which really good board games have iPad / iPhone analogues.

Random question that I think you guys would know more about than anyone else. What are the best board games currently out on iPad? My wife and I have been having a great time being able to pack around Ticket to Ride, Puerto Rico and other games that we play on trips. I was wondering if there was anything else we were missing. We know about Carcassonne and Catan as well. I don't think there is an iPad version of Powergrid (our favorite physical board game) nor Dominion. Any recommendations would be helpful.

And no, I'm not trying to turn this into another video game thread. I have a major passion for board games. I just figured it might be safe to ask which really good board games have iPad / iPhone analogues.

I'd give Smallworld a go, I sunk quite a bit of time into that on iPad. Battle of Gundabad is a Dominion clone, but still fun (but not a universal app, thus looks pretty bad on an iPad. Hive (tile placement) is quite good as well, not to mention Elder Sign (dice pool management).

Steam: DrGandalf, Xbox Live: Johnvanjim
"War is god's way of teaching Americans geography." - Jon Stewart
"The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents." - Howard Philips Lovecraft

I just look at them longinly on the shelf, and for some strange reason want more Part of the problem I find, is that when I do sucker someone into playing something. I don't remember or know the rules, so it ends up in trying to figure everything out which for a non-gamer usually means they have no interest in playing.

I bought Small World to play with my daughters age 10-12, but they didn't want to sit through the rules explanation!

I didn't know it was happening. I'm pretty interested in that game but not sure how often I would ever get to play it. I have enough trouble getting A Few Acres of Snow on the table.

I want to for the improved board, but there's no way I can justify a whole new edition of it. I really wish you could get a version of the upgrade kit with the board but without the card box and sleeves. The game is fantastic, and one of my absolute favorites. You can pry it from my cold, dead hands.

I just look at them longinly on the shelf, and for some strange reason want more

I have the same problem. Thankfully my wife just fell in love with Agricola so I'm feeling pretty good about board games right now.

That's a shame about Smallworld though, there aren't even that many rules in the game.

Kids these days.. no attention span!

Part of the problem is I didn't really know how to play, so I'm trying to learn the rules as well.
I think I have to sit down and play some turns by myself.

That's about right. I've only played it once and it took some time to really digest the rulebook and everything but once we got going we realized that it's pretty straightforward. The player aid that comes with the game sums up the game really nicely. Once past the basic turn options the only issue is all of the special powers.

This is making me really want to play it again.

Cloquette wrote:

I feel like I'm being asked to play chess but before I can make my next move, I have to listen to the innermost feelings of my queen-side rook.

I just look at them longinly on the shelf, and for some strange reason want more

I have the same problem. Thankfully my wife just fell in love with Agricola so I'm feeling pretty good about board games right now.

That's a shame about Smallworld though, there aren't even that many rules in the game.

Kids these days.. no attention span!

Part of the problem is I didn't really know how to play, so I'm trying to learn the rules as well.
I think I have to sit down and play some turns by myself.

That's about right. I've only played it once and it took some time to really digest the rulebook and everything but once we got going we realized that it's pretty straightforward. The player aid that comes with the game sums up the game really nicely. Once past the basic turn options the only issue is all of the special powers.

This is making me really want to play it again.

My son and wife aren't into tabletop games at all, but my daughter enjoys playing with me. I was wondering if this game would play well enough with only the two of us?

I do remember it seeming more complicated than I thought it should be. Part of what I find difficult with kids and boardgames is that they don't deal with strategy very well. They can grasp the basic mechanics, etc. but when given too many choices they don't seem to be able to make strategic decisions, which for a lot of these games are necessary.

My son and wife aren't into tabletop games at all, but my daughter enjoys playing with me. I was wondering if this game would play well enough with only the two of us?

Having only played it once I'm probably not the best person to answer this but I enjoyed it as a 2 player game. It comes with different boards depending on how many players you have so that helps it keep the balance with 2 players vs more.

Cloquette wrote:

I feel like I'm being asked to play chess but before I can make my next move, I have to listen to the innermost feelings of my queen-side rook.